Posted on 03/24/2005 5:53:02 PM PST by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
Editor's Note: Since this column was written the federal appeals court has turned down the appeals of Terri Schiavo's family.
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Prospects for saving Terri Schiavo appear increasingly dim. Unless a federal appeals court acts immediately to instruct the district court to order a feeding tube re-inserted, she will die of dehydration and starvation in a matter of days. A surprising number of Americans believe this is a good thing, at least according to some polls taken over the last few weeks.
An ABC poll taken this week showed that 63 percent of Americans favored the removal of Schiavo's feeding tubes, while only 28 percent opposed the court-ordered action. But a closer look at the poll reveals stunning bias in the way the question was posed. The poll asserted that Schiavo "has been on life support for 15 years," and that "doctors say she has no consciousness and her condition is irreversible," before positing the question, "Do you support or oppose the decision to remove Schiavo's feeding tube?" But the premise itself was wrong.
Schiavo was not on "life support" as that term is commonly understood. She suffers no life-threatening disease or condition. She required no ventilator to assist her breathing, no dialysis machine for kidney function, nor any other medical "life support" systems. Like many severely disabled people, Schiavo does require assistance in obtaining nutrition. It's not even clear that she requires the permanent use of a feeding tube. Several physicians who have examined Schiavo acknowledge that she swallows her own saliva -- an estimated two liters a day -- and at least one board-certified neurologist who examined her on three separate occasions has testified that she probably could be trained to swallow other liquids as well, given the proper therapy. If she can swallow on her own, it would require little more to keep Schiavo alive than it does all infants and many elderly and physically or mentally disabled people -- a caring individual to feed and clothe her and attend to her personal hygiene.
So on what basis is withholding food and water justified? Many of those polled by ABC seemed to base their responses on how they would want to be treated in similar circumstances. "If you were in this condition, would you want to be kept alive, or not?" the pollsters asked. Some 78 percent of respondents said they would not want to be kept alive -- an astonishingly high number. But, interestingly, only one week earlier another ABC poll found an even larger number -- 87 percent -- who said they would want to die in similar circumstances.
But who really knows how he or she would feel if faced with such a decision, and is it morally responsible to make such a decision far in advance? The news media have been obsessed with advising people to make out "advance medical directives" or "living wills" so that their families will not encounter the agonizing end-of-life debates that Terri Schiavo's family faced. But the ABC poll raises some interesting questions. Assuming the poll itself included a valid, representative sample, nearly 10 percent fewer people would choose death if asked the question at another time. Clearly many people change their minds -- so is it really a good idea to base a decision as momentous as ending a life on what someone thinks he wants years earlier?
Of course, we don't know what Terri Schiavo would have wanted. Whether she is in a persistent vegetative state or not -- and there is debate among those physicians who have actually examined her on this issue, notwithstanding the mainstream media's disingenuous attempts to suggest otherwise -- we don't know what Schiavo wanted. We have only her husband's word (corroborated by Michael Schiavo's family, not Terri's) that she once said, after viewing a movie about a comatose patient, that she wouldn't want to live in such a condition.
Under the circumstances, what possible harm could come from keeping Schiavo alive? Her parents and several benefactors have offered to assume the financial burden of doing so. Yet, the courts have, so far, deferred to Michael Schiavo's wishes to withdraw food and water from Terri, despite the compromised nature of his relationship with his wife. Michael Schiavo has been in a decade-long common-law relationship with another woman by whom he's fathered two children, while still tenaciously asserting his spousal rights to determine Terri's fate, and he stands to inherit whatever is left of a million-dollar medical malpractice settlement awarded for Terri Schiavo's care.
If a court can order Terri Schiavo to be slowly starved to death on the wishes of an estranged husband, who will be next?
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Linda Chavez is the author of the new book, "Betrayal: How Union Bosses Shake Down Their Members and Corrupt American Politics."
COPYRIGHT 2005 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.
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Note -- The opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions, views, and/or philosophy of GOPUSA.
Guess what I found....... on Terri
"The road to abuse
That's a system that's ripe for abuse by family members with ulterior motives. It's what many believe has happened in the case of Terri Schiavo—the disabled Florida woman whose husband has kept her in a hospice for years while seeking the court's permission to remove the feeding tube on which she depends so she can starve to death. Michael Schiavo lives with and has fathered two children with another woman and stands to inherit Terri's estate if she dies—the reason her parents believe he's never divorced her.
"The Terri Schiavo case cannot be understood without … the background of hospice and the right-to-die movement," Panzer said. "She was placed [in hospice care] as a test case for the right-to-die movement to establish a legal precedent to end the lives of the disabled using hearsay evidence [about her end-of-life wishes], which is very common in hospice settings and in cases where one family member wishes to end the life of the patient."
http://www.lifenews.com/bio186.html
http://home.earthlink.net/~joyinlife/#Community-State_Partnerships
Third Way to Assisted Suicide?
How a handful of progressive foundations and quasi-government agencies
set out to provide equitable distribution of health care,
and in the process,
created a duty to die and a culture of death.
And how they hope to secure their legacy . . .
Featuring the collaboration of:
the Hastings Center, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF),
George Soros's Project on Death in America (PDIA), Institute of Medicine (IOM),
AARP, Choice in Dying, and a number of prestigious universities,
to name only a few.
It's not inconceivable that there is a homosexual angle to this although no one has pursued that on any of the many threads devoted to this issue.
One does have to wonder if Michael Schiavo has something on Greer. Greer seems to be his lapdog.
I have read ABC News, CBS News, Fox News, and CNN, and none of them give a clear picture of what is going on in Florida.
From this day forward, I will never trust one of them to tell the truth again.
No one questions even if Michael Schiavo has a right to the guardianship of Terri Schivo, since he has been cohabiting with another woman for many years, even has children by her, and he does have a clear conflict of interest here.
I feel that no adultereous husband or wife should have the right to put spouse to death. This is what is happening to Terri Schiavo, her adulterous husband is having her put to death slowly by starvation and dehydration. This is most cruel, and if done to a dog, it would be considered "cruelty to animals". But by killing Terri slowly, they can get away with it better than if it were a gun shot to the head, or a lethal injection, but murder is still murder, the fast way or the slow way.
Terri is the canary, America is the coal mine.
An evil gordian knot: euthanasia-malthusianism-"Peak Oil" obsession-Gaia worship-secular humanism-genetic preselection-the death of marriage-the end of minimum age of consent-etc.
pin
Why didn't he order a lethal injection?
That's a funny angle. The old "panties and bra under the black robe" type of guy.
Greer is so invested in this ordeal, he wouldn't reverse himself if Terri walked into court herself, and begged to be fed.
The Libs have now, in less than a decade, drilled it into a TV oriented youth that:
1. Oral sex is not sex.
2. It's ok to lie about sex and infidelity.
3. Gay is good. Any opinion to the contrary is evil.
4. Slowly starving a disabled person, is acceptable.
5. Starving to death is painless and "euphoric"
The list goes on, I think I'm gonna go and be sick now.
That would make sense, considering the object is Terri's death. But somehow "letting her die" through court ordered neglect sounds less like murder, or less like the execution that it is. Eventually, I expect we will cross that line to giving lethal injections to the sick and disabled. And that will inevitably open the doors to a whole new world of moral and ethical problems, making euthenasia too easy, too common, and too easily abused.
From what I have read this evening, the sop is to deny water and then administer morphine to cause vomiting and hasten death. Please look at that timeline from my earthlink post. It has a F>c$ing CHART on it.
HOW DAMN EVIL IS IT TO TRY TO MAKE THIS WOMAN DIE ON GOOD FRIDAY? WITH THE CONSENT OF THE COURTS AND THE EXECUTIVE?
The last martyr......next the change of the Pope himself.
Food and water given by mouth are not life support or extraordinary means in any shape, form or fashion. No judge has the power to order a person be denied food and water by mouth. I defy anyone to show me a legal authority for such an abomination. Why is Jeb waiting? Has this specific facet of this case been challenged? If not, why not? Greer is only getting away with this because no one is standing up to him.
On other threads it has been stated that she is swallowing her own saliva and she may be able to take water and diluted food. A Harvard physician said in the Weekly standard that there is no medical, legal or ethical reason not to give her a chance to take nourishment and water by mouth. Judge Greer is wrong on this and why George or Jeb Bush haven't acted (she is in a federally financed and regulated hospice afterall) I cannot understand.
"You know in some twisted way I think they they believe that giving her a lethal injection would be killing her but somehow removing food and water is not, no it is "letting her die". These people are very twisted - completely lost in a sea of blackness."
Well put. If you are complacent in a murder you are considered to had aided and abetted. This whole thing is a sad comment on the direction this country is headed.
This country is at the doorstep of a very dark place. I think we have been headed there for a long time.
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